Reading and Fibrecrafts

Tracy Arm

We had a long lie-in this morning. So long in fact that we never actually made it to breakfast. We just felt really lazy. Not a problem though. Stephen popped up to deck nine to fetch some coffee while we were deciding whether we could be bothered to go to breakfast or not and when we decide we couldn’t, we just phoned for room service. Ten minutes later we were tucking into BLTs, fries and a big jug of coffee. Yum. I was still in bed so that’s where I ate my breakfast.

Eventually we stirred ourselves and dressed very warmly and went up onto deck ten. We got blankets and managed to stay up there for about 40 minutes before going back down to the shelter of deck nine. You can’t really take photos down there because of the reflections in the screens but it’s much more sheltered and therefore slightly warmer. The ship turned into Tracy Arm at around 1pm and the scenery got even more spectacular from then on. It was overcast and misty and it rained for a while but we were ok under cover.

We got lunch from Beach Blanket which today was a barbecue, Alaska style. Now I’ve done some odd things in my life but it was completely surreal sitting on the deck of a ship, eating delicious barbecued salmon, steak, and halibut while watching the icebergs pass us by. Yes, icebergs. Lots of them, and some quite large. Surreal. Just as we finished eating, an old friend came by so I had my photo taken with him.

Occasionally I popped up onto deck ten to take a couple of photos as we were right by the steps and eventually when we were about a mile away from the glacier we both went up and got a spot by the rail on the port side. Wow, the view was amazing and was actually worth braving the cold. The glacier was beautiful.

We just had to wait for another ship to shift out of the way so we could get closer and then everyone on both ships completely forgot there was a stunning glacier to look at and cheered (or possibly jeered) at the other ship and waved and took photos of each other.

Then we got close enough to take more photos of the glacier. By this time, Stephen had gone over to the Starboard side to make sure we got an assortment of photos and I was having a nice conversation with the chap next to me. I’ve met some lovely people from all over the place.

Once I’d got plenty of photos, and gazed on the glacier for a while, I felt I’d seen enough of it. My feet were going numb and I was shivering so I let Stephen know I was going back inside and I went for a nice warming shower. Then I relaxed for a while with the laptop and then my book. Stephen joined me after a while and promptly fell asleep. The show tonight was the comedian that we’d seen last night, only this was his family show. Having seen him twice already, we decided to give this show a miss. We also missed dinner. Partly because Stephen wasn’t hungry and partly because we were tired. We got room service, mostly for me as I was quite peckish but Stephen did have a bit to eat. We didn’t stay up late as we knew we had an early start and a big day ahead of us tomorrow in Skagway.